BSM-Pompeu Fabra University

Monograph series. Transversal looks, voices and science

12 Teaching creativity

Creativity and creation

Jorge Carrión

Creativity is a capacity that lies in all of us. We often express it through the term “idea”. Ideas appear above all when we drift around the physical or virtual world: walking, in the shower, on train or plane journeys, during downtime, while surfing the internet, in conversations among friends or partners, during lapses of time when we are not concentrating on anything and precisely for that reason everything can come to us. The idea comes to us in the form of a “vision”, of wholeness, of unspecific intuition, of abstraction; but its appearance can be brought on by specific factors: stimuli, sources, readings. All ideas are remixes of previous ideas. What is new is the formula: the ingredients already existed. But you have to know them, and you have to know what formulas already existed, in order for ours to be really new. There is no better way to teach people creativity, therefore, than studying tradition and the present, with our radar switched on to detect areas where innovation is possible.

Once we have come up with the idea, or “visio” as the ancients said, through the chaotic creative process, the creative process and the transformation of capacity into action begins, through the “missio” – the “mission” – which by its nature is a vocation of order. Formalization. All of us are more or less creative, but what is really difficult is also being creators. To this end, it is necessary to have a command of a technique, a craft. Or several of them. If we do not have a command of them, the creative process will involve the search for collaborators. Both in the vision and in the mission, the shadow of the romantic myth of the individual genius continues to be present. But in reality, ideas are networks and the creative processes and creators also come in the form of a network. Steve Jobs, Ferran Adrià or Quentin Tarantino, to name three very different creators, are above all coordinators – with a great deal of intuition and training – of teams, of networks, visionaries and missionaries, creatives and creators.